This invention relates to a method and a machine especially for cutting fish pieces, e.g. pieces/slices of a size ready to be served without further cutting, from fish fillets, but the method and machine may also be used for cutting pieces of meat. The fish pieces may have the form of elongated pieces as a result of the fact that the fish fillet has been cut longitudinally, or they may result from longitudinally and/or laterally cutting of fish fillets.
A general object of the present invention has been to provide machinable boned and skinned fish pieces which may have a size readily to be served, e.g. a uniform size ready for the pan. Fish pieces having appropriately equal circumferential sizes, possibly with varying thicknesses may prove to be a valuable raw material when making fish courses in restaurants and for parties. One possible fish piece shape is the square shape, but, according to the invention, the conditions intentionally having been adapted for mechanical production of boned and skinned fish pieces having a plurality of circumferential shapes, inclusive such fish piece shapes where one restriction edge is made by letting a knife or another cutting tool more or less follow the adjacent edge of the fillet.
From NO patent application No. 92,1899 it is previously known a method and a machine for cutting slices from non-skinned fish fillets, where the fillets are fed toward a freezing drum causing freezing and securing the fillet firmly at the skin side, in order to allow convenient and efficient working of the fillet in this securely anchored position. Thereby, the fish fillet is orientated such that its longitudinal direction coincides with the circumferential direction of the freezing drum. A cutting tool in the form of a driven endless band knife's active cutting edge is positioned at a radial distance from the drum mantle surface, corresponding to the desired thickness of fish slices (cut parallel to the skin), and where, from the fillet sticking to the freezing drum, a fish meat slice is cut, the divitional plan thereof extending substantially parallel to the drum circumference.